Judicial Reform: The Tragedy of the "Goats" Netanyahu Could Not Remove

Judicial Reform: The Tragedy of the “Goats” Netanyahu Could Not Remove
Dr. Aaron Lerner 18.10.2026
https://youtu.be/LCcHacfJ_rk

In an interview with Kalman Liebskind published in Makor Rishon on 24
September 2026, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, in response to a
question about the judicial reform: “I am not going into the tactical
aspect, because I was legally barred from dealing with it.”

These remarks deserve renewed examination in light of the events that shook
Israel in 2023.

It is precisely the word “tactical” that may be the key to understanding one
of the central failures in the management of the judicial reform.

It is possible that if Netanyahu had been permitted to manage the reform, a
significant portion of the public crisis that developed around it could have
been avoided. Not because he necessarily opposed the reform, but because he
had previously demonstrated the ability to change course sharply when he
concluded that circumstances required it.

In legislative processes, it is sometimes customary to include far-reaching
clauses known as “goats,” with the intention of later removing them and
creating room for compromise.

In the case of the judicial reform, there is evidence that this is exactly
what was done.

In an article by Hilo Glazer published in the weekend magazine of Haaretz on
4 May 2023, under the headline “Extreme Pessimist, Ascetic, ‘Snake in
Glasses’: Who Is Yariv Levin, Really?”, it was written:

“At the beginning of the process, Levin told associates that he never
intended for his plan to pass in its maximalist version, and admitted that
he had planted many goats in it. When he discovered that no one was willing
to ‘talk’ with him, he joked with his people that ‘in the end the reform
will still pass as is.’ Over time his mood darkened and he expressed to his
interlocutors genuine frustration at the feeling that on the other side
there was no one to talk to.”

In other words, already in May 2023 it was published that the original
wording of the reform was not necessarily the wording Levin intended to pass
in the end. Some of the clauses were meant to serve as bargaining
chips-those “goats” that were supposed to come out during the negotiations.

However, in this case, instead of waiting for negotiations during which the
“goats” would be removed, the opposition turned the initial drafts into the
focus of public protest.

People who were not necessarily sworn opponents of the government read the
drafts as submitted and did not understand that this was a bargaining
exercise.

Thus the clauses intended as a means toward compromise became a central tool
for mobilizing opposition.

At that moment it was necessary to remove them unilaterally and present the
public with a revised version, but at the same time a dynamic developed
within Likud in which the initial drafts were increasingly presented as
positions from which one must not budge.

Instead of facilitating compromise, the “goats” became an obstacle on the
way to it.

Already on 18 June 2023, an article was published in IMRA calling on
Netanyahu to remove the “goats” and present the public with the reform
legislation without them, under the headline: “Mr. Netanyahu, Let the Public
See the Reform Legislation Without the Goats.”

Yet according to his words in the interview, the prime minister was legally
barred from dealing with the management of the tactics.

That is the tragedy: not that the solution was unknown, but that the person
who might have implemented it was not permitted to do so.

We cannot know how things would have developed if Netanyahu had been free to
manage the reform, but it is worth re-examining the sequence of events and
the heavy price the State of Israel paid.

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IMRA – Independent Media Review and Analysis

Since 1992 providing news and analysis on the Middle East with a focus on
Arab-Israeli relations

Website: www.imra.org.il

Source: https://www.imra.org.il/story.php?id=74502